


casket fresh

by renhyuck (thereisnoreality)



Series: born to die [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 04:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereisnoreality/pseuds/renhyuck
Summary: Donghyuck snorts. “Who said anything about living?” He turns to look at Renjun, eyes amused but dead and cold. “Darling, we stopped living the second our names were called.”





	casket fresh

**Author's Note:**

> this a hunger games au and so there is a lot of death, some descriptions of people dying and lack of morals from our main characters. there is also a mention of suicide and one of the characters does commit suicide but it isn't explicitly described on screen. please don't read this if it will affect you, I want you to be safe. 
> 
> I also wrote this all in one night and I'm lowkey very proud of how it turned out.
> 
> title is from hyuckie's line in regular because I told my sister I loved that line so much I'd write a whole fic just so I could use it as a title and I did

 

Renjun stares out the window, moodily bringing the cigarette back up to his lips.

 

“Those things will kill you, you know,” Donghyuck says from behind him. Renjun snorts and doesn’t bother turning until he sits down next to him. It’s not a shock anymore to see Donghyuck in crazy hair colors and clothes, always following the trends of Panem as avidly as a middle aged housewife does, but it’s more of a surprise to see him with black hair and jeans, looking the most normal he’s looked in years.

 

“What’s this change?” Renjun asks putting a finger up to his locks with the same hand that’s holding his cigarette. Donghyuck doesn’t flinch as the burning embers land on his cheek when Renjun jostles his hand. Renjun stays a little longer, if only to see if Donghyuck will react, and then pulls away.

 

“New year, new games,” Donghyuck says lightly, plucking the cigarette from his hand and taking a long drag. “New me.”

 

Renjun hums, accepting it back from him. “New us,” he agrees drolly, watching lightning flash across the empty sky.

 

-

 

It was unprecedented having the same district that wasn’t district one or two win two years in a row.

 

Donghyuck gets reaped first. He and Renjun sit next to each other, hands gripping each other tight and Renjun knows by the way Donghyuck digs his nails into Renjun’s palm that he knows he’s going to get picked. He doesn’t throw a fit, doesn’t cry, does nothing but stare straight ahead, looking all to the world as if he were reading a particularly dry book as his female counterpart breaks down sobbing next to him.

 

He doesn’t say anything until he’s set to board the train and faces Renjun with a dry look on his face. “Any advice?” He asks, eyes flicking over Renjun’s face, as if he’s trying to memorise every aspect of it.

 

Renjun bites down on every angry expletive he’s thought of, pushes back everything he’s feeling and wraps his hands around Donghyuck’s jaw, thumbs gripping his chin and tugs in him in by the neck looking him straight in the eyes. “Do not die” he says. “Do you understand me?”

 

Donghyuck gazes back at him, eyes golden and warm in the light. “Yes.” Is all he says and then he’s gone, whisked onto the train and blown away by the wind.

 

 

Donghyuck charms all of Panem as if he’s been doing it all the time. He smiles beautifully, eyes sparkling in the spotlight, hair newly caramel and gleaming. He laughs at everything the host  says, holding a hand in front of his mouth trying to cover his mouth while showing it off at the same time. Renjun sits in front of the screen the whole time, knees to his chest and observes every movement, every small tilt of his head, every smile. Donghyuck’s hands are covered in cuts, the only flaw not covered up by Panem’s artificiality.

 

Renjun watches the Games with his heart in his mouth and his jaw clenched, biting down on his tongue hard enough for it to bleed. Donghyuck plays nice, makes an alliance with powerful tributes and acts as the pack mule for three days straight. Renjun’s annoyance at him only grows because he sees the way the others look at him as if seeing an easy kill, hears the conversations they have behind his back as he gets parachute after parachute, showered in gifts from adoring sponsors.

 

It’s on the fourth day that Donghyuck flips. He follows another tribute in deadly silence, sneaking around the city-scape with precision before he pins them against a wall and snaps their neck in one smooth move, the veins in his wrist bulging as he does. Renjun’s heart jumps, and something in his chest starts aching, hard and horrible when Donghyuck looks straight up at the camera, eyes cold and dead and winks. Charming and dangerous.

 

It only takes two days before he kills off the rest of the alliance, getting heavily injured in the final fight with one of the tributes from district one, his knife slicing into Donghyuck’s calf. Donghyuck doesn’t bother pulling it out, just lunges forward and swings his axe into the tributes neck, wedging it in so hard the tribute falls backward with an audible _thud_. Renjun bites his bottom lip so hard it starts bleeding.

 

Donghyuck wins at the end of the second week of the Games. He hides out in an abandoned building for three days before, leg heavily bleeding the whole time, face getting paler and paler and Renjun’s chest aches harder and harder. _You told me you understood_ Renjun thinks. Donghyuck has never broken a promise to him before, spoken or unspoken. _You said yes._

 

Donghyuck wins in a way most fitting for him. Dramatic and empathetic, yet strong, just as he’s played the character the whole time. The last tribute is a small boy, someone who hadn’t even shown up on camera ninety percent of the time from how well he’d been hiding. He does the stupid thing and goes to find Donghyuck, goes to plead with him to help him. Donghyuck just looks up at the boy from where he’s sitting, leg bleeding out on the floor, hand trembling hard against the wound.

 

And for a heart stopping second Renjun thinks he’s going to give in, thinks he’s going to lay down his life for the snivelling creature in front of him. _You promised_ Renjun thinks desperately and just then Donghyuck’s eyes flick to the camera and it’s like he’s staring into Renjun’s eyes. _You promised_. Donghyuck turns back to the boy and nods, holding out his hand to get help up and the second the boy sticks out his hand Donghyuck grabs him and whispers an apology before cleanly snapping his neck. A cannon booms.

 

-

 

Renjun gets reaped next. Precisely a year later he sits in the same metal chairs, the sun beating down on his neck. Except this time, there’s no Donghyuck next to him. Instead he’s up on the stage, head tilted in a sweetly charming smile. Renjun knows, just as Donghyuck had known, that just before the name is read that it’s going to be him. It makes sense. There’s nowhere one of them has gone that the other hasn’t followed.

 

Donghyuck’s smile doesn’t slip when Renjun climbs the stage, doesn’t slip when he’s being cried over by his mom and his sister, doesn’t slip through the whole meeting with the other tribute, doesn’t slip until they’re in Renjun’s compartment in the train, sitting a respectable distance apart on the bed.

 

“Any advice, mentor?” Renjun asks, lips twisting in a smirk.

 

Donghyuck turns to look at him, eyes cold and hard. Renjun’s heart hammers harder, but not in fear. He’s never been afraid of Donghyuck. “Don’t die.”

 

Renjun’s Games are a different type of hell. While Donghyuck had had a cold barren city scape, buildings half destroyed and ash in the air, Renjun has a swamp. It’s hot and biting, there are bugs the size of squirrels flying around leaving gouges that ache and bleed and drip pus.

 

Renjun isn’t charming, he isn’t loveable, no matter how hard he tries he cannot smile for the camera, cannot make himself sweet and malleable, can’t make himself Donghyuck. But he has Donghyuck on his side. He gets help, maybe not as much as Donghyuck had did last year, but he gets help nonetheless.

 

 _Don’t die_ greets him on a small slip of paper that comes with a large bowl of ointment to help with the bug bites.

 

 _Don’t die_ accompanies food on the tenth day when Renjun is stuck up a tree with a swamp halfway up the trunk, the bubbles spouting noxious gas into the air.

 

 _Don’t die_ comes with a large hunting knife the day before Renjun kills three tributes making him one of the last three surviving.

 

He isn’t Donghyuck. He doesn’t make clean, merciful kills. He stabs deep and hard, gets splattered with blood and on one memorable occasion rips a limb off halfway before throwing the tribute into a massive venus flytrap. He isn’t Donghyuck but he wins. His last fight is nasty and desperate. The last girl pins him down by the neck and pushes a small dagger into his intestine twisting nastily while grinning. Renjun gasps around a mouthful of blood staring up at the green sky. _Don’t die_ . He arches up, throwing her off him and just manages to push her head into the path of a spike that erupts out of the ground. The cannon booms and Renjun collapses to his knees, blood bubbling up around his lips. _Don’t die._

 

 _Alright_ he thinks. _I won’t._

 

-

 

Life after the Games is strange. He comes back to district seven and moves into his house in the Victor’s Village just across from Donghyuck’s. It takes him a month, one month of nightmares, one month of waking up biting his own tongue so hard he fills his mouth with his own blood, of stumbling across the road to find Donghyuck already awake, a second glass on the table waiting for him, one month before he makes the decision to move to the Capitol.

 

Donghyuck comes with him. Of course he does. With the exception of the Games, they haven’t been apart for more than a day in all eighteen years of their lives. They find an apartment together, high above the city, dangerously close to the center of the Capitol and settle into their new lives with all the ease of someone constantly having to hear nails on chalkboard.

 

It’s not as if it gets any easier away from home. If anything being in the Capitol makes the nightmares worse, makes the paranoia worse. The only thing that makes it slightly bearable is that when Renjun wakes, Donghyuck is already awake, sitting right next to him, blanket tangled around his legs, a tissue in his hand to stop the bleeding in Renjun’s mouth. It doesn’t get better but Renjun finds some comfort in the fact that the person lying next to him at night doesn’t want to kill him. It doesn’t get better.

 

Donghyuck assures him he’ll get used to it.

 

“You just have to remind yourself that you survived,” he says passing the bottle to Renjun as they sit on the roof of their apartment, watching the stars above. “You survived that and now you have to survive this.”

 

“Is that living though?” Renjun asks, swallowing a mouthful of vodka, oddly sentimental in the dark, the burn of the alcohol dripping down his throat. “Surviving?”

 

Donghyuck snorts. “Who said anything about living?” He turns to look at Renjun, eyes amused but dead and cold. “Darling, we stopped living the second our names were called.” He tips the bottle into his mouth and Renjun bathes in the cold comfort of the pet name, lets it wash over him for a second before he brushes it away. There is no room for sentiment here. They’re not the same people they were a year ago, two years ago. Renjun doesn’t have the luxury of remembering nights when he and Donghyuck would sneak out into the old forests, scaling trees so high, the air seemed thinner and kissing until the sun came up. He knows that the second he becomes comfortable, he’ll lose. The second he shows weakness, he’s dead. And Donghyuck is perhaps his greatest weakness.

 

Donghyuck is watching him, gaze knowing and Renjun has the feeling he’s already been down this road in his own head before. Has come to the same conclusion Renjun has. It’s not surprising. They were always too similar to put into words.

 

Renjun tips the bottle at him in silent cheers. “Here’s to surviving then,” a smirk crawls across his mouth. “Darling.”

 

-

 

Donghyuck comes back late at night, neck covered in purple bruises, eyes hooded and dark, his purple hair ratty and stinking of smoke.

 

“Go shower,” Renjun says and turns away to find some food in the kitchen. He doesn’t pretend for a second that he doesn’t know what Donghyuck had done during his Games to get him those gifts, that all those gilded parachutes came with a price that Donghyuck had been more than willing to pay. He functions, more often than not, as a host for parties and television shows, breaking out the smile that had dazzled the entire capital more than three years ago. But if those nights slide into something more seedy and dangerous, it’s not as if anyone will talk.

 

“What was it tonight?” Renjun asks as Donghyuck limps back in, and with his sleep shirt on, loose and thin, Renjun can see every bruise on his chest, every sharp angry bite left by people who aren’t him. His hands ache to break something, anything.

 

“Smokers club,” Donghyuck says, voice hoarse. He smiles, a dark flickering thing. “They wanted me to put on a show.”

 

Renjun knows his own situation is not enviable but he’s silently, achingly glad that he isn’t in Donghyuck’s place. Even though he wants to rip the heads off everyone who’s ever touched him.

 

“How was your work?” Donghyuck asks, glancing up at him. “Kill anyone special today, darling?”

 

Renjun operates as an assassin. The Capitol had, well, capitalised upon his newfound skills in the arena and had immediately granted him a job when he’d asked for it. He shrugs, pouring a glass of wine for Donghyuck. It’s not hard liquor but it’s what Donghyuck needs right now. “No one important,” he says waiting until Donghyuck has drained the glass, looking far older than any twenty one year old had the right to be. “Couple of housewives getting too close to a secret. It was simple.” He sets the empty glass in the sink and stands, flicking off the light and walking to their bedroom, knowing Donghyuck will follow.

 

They don’t touch until they’re lying in bed, facing each other and even then it’s just the brushing of pinky fingers, just enough to know that the other is there. Donghyuck looks tired, more so than usual and Renjun aches to sweep a comforting finger across his eye bags, aches to lean down and kiss him until he’s gasping wetly into the space between their lips, the events of today completely washed away. But he cannot afford to do so. Weakness is an addictive thing.

 

Instead he pushes his foot closer until it’s barely brushing against Donghyuck’s calf.

 

“Darling,” he whispers and Donghyuck’s eyes flutter open, waiting and watching, yet still cold as ever. “Survive.”

 

Donghyuck gazes at him before smiling, a small thing, the corner of his mouth tipping up just barely, almost unnoticeable. However Renjun has lived solely on Donghyuck before, has survived merely from drinking in his laugh and devouring his mouth until they can’t tell whose limbs are whose, and he notices because Donghyuck is the only subject he knows like the back of his own hands.

 

“Survive,” Donghyuck agrees and they fall asleep like that, staring at each other in the darkness of their room, the chests rising and falling in unison, hearts beating in tandem.

  
  
-

 

 

Renjun’s job is easy. Every morning he wakes, checks his comm pad and slips out of bed quietly enough not to wake Donghyuck though they both know that he awoke the second Renjun’s breathing pattern changed. The second he puts on his gear, he disassociates. It’s like he’s watching himself do the tasks assigned, watching with mild interest as he kills or tortures or maims. Simple. Clean. Easy.

 

Through all of this, the Games remain the sole star of his nightmares. Every year when he and Donghyuck are sent back to their district to try and push two helpless kids into winning, they double in vengeance. Every time the Games roll around, Donghyuck takes to sleeping with a knife under his pillow lest Renjun try to strangle him in his sleep. His job is easy. The Games are what will always haunt him.

 

-

 

Their fourth year as mentors they get their first kid who has a chance of winning. Jeno Lee is smart and tough. His arm muscles, corded from years axing trees, look like they could snap a man in half.

 

He wins Panem over, maybe not as easily as Donghyuck had done - Renjun doesn’t believe anyone will ever achieve that - but his charm is deadly and his smile is deadlier. Donghyuck disappears for three days straight after the Games begin and Renjun knows what he’s doing. He just doesn’t understand why.

 

“Because I want to give him a chance,” Donghyuck says not even wincing as Renjun applies ointment to the cuts on his waist, lips swollen and bitten from a mouth that isn’t Renjun’s. “I want to give him a chance to survive.”

 

“Don’t hope for foolish things.” Renjun warns.

 

Donghyuck smiles. “Hope?” He laughs and his skin jumps under Renjun’s hands, warm where his eyes are cold. “Darling whatever gave you that idea?”

 

Renjun concedes, putting the first aid kit away. Donghyuck knows better than to believe in such a childlike thing.

 

 

 

Jeno Lee makes it to the last four tributes before he’s killed by a sword to the chest. Renjun and Donghyuck watch, silent, until his body stops twitching and the cannon booms.

 

Hope. What a silly concept.

 

-

 

 

Jaemin Na comes the next year and it’s the first time Renjun is mildly taken aback by a tribute. Jaemin is ruthless and cold and desperate to win. He scores a ten in the evaluation, kills five tributes in the fight to the Cornucopia and destroys everyone who comes after him with a small smile, blood spattered across his lips and vividly pink hair.

 

Jaemin wins until he doesn’t. It’s a stupid, stupid mistake, one that Donghyuck and Renjun would have never made. He stands over the last tribute for a brief second before turning away, turning his back, only to stabbed in it, knife ripping up his spinal cord. He dies instantly.

 

“Always wait for the cannon.” Is all Renjun says and Donghyuck nods, draining the bottle in one go.

 

“Foolish.” He agrees.

 

-

 

Mark Lee comes during their seventh year and Renjun immediately pegs him as dead. Mark Lee is too soft for the cold, harsh climate of Panem. He wears glasses, and tugs his sweater over his hands as Donghyuck and Renjun lead him to their apartment. It’s a tradition they do with every tribute the night before the training starts. Mark is too nice, too kind, too good for this world. His eyes widen when he sees their library, sparkling with delight and behind his back Renjun shoots Donghyuck a look. Mark Lee will not make it past an hour in the arena.

 

He is immediately proven wrong the next day. Donghyuck sets off to watch the tributes in training and Renjun trails behind, annoyed.

 

“I don’t know why you do this to yourself,” he hisses as they stand behind the windows about the training center. “They will fail. You know this, why do you insist on mentoring them anyway?”

 

“Because the odds are never in our favour,” Donghyuck says, arms folded, eyes cold and narrowed as he watches. “But I’ll give them as much help as I can to even them.” He jerks his chin at the edge of the arena. “Besides, I think you might have been proven wrong.”

 

Mark Lee is soft but he is also skilled. He can tie basic knots, knows how to handle knives, fights back as much as possible against the Careers, and can instantly tell the difference between the poisonous plants and non poisonous ones. He isn’t good, but he isn’t helpless.

 

Mark makes it past the Cornucopia, makes it past a day, two, three in the arena and Renjun admits that he was wrong. Neither of them speak when they watch the Games, just sit in silence as Mark takes down tribute after tribute, eyes shining with unshed tears as he does so.

 

“He won’t make it,” Renjun says as the anthem plays for the night and they flick off the screen.

 

Donghyuck quirks an eyebrow at him in question.

 

“He doesn’t have the instinct,” Renjun elaborates. “It’s all very well knowing how to kill people, but that kid doesn’t want to survive, he wants to _live_. And he already died when his name was called. He won’t make it.”

  


 

Mark Lee wins. It’s a silent ending, the last tribute dying of an infection and Mark stands there under the spotlight, hands clenched and tears finally dripping down his face for the first time since the Games had begun.

 

“You were wrong,” Donghyuck says as they take the train back to accompany Mark to their district. “He did win.”

 

Renjun shrugs. “Believe what you want, darling,” he says and Donghyuck purses his lips.

  
  


 

Mark Lee does not take to winning well. He cries constantly, and when he isn’t crying, he sleeps. Renjun goes to visit him a month later to find Donghyuck already there, pushing a shot of whiskey at him.

 

“What do I do?” Mark asks, desperation wringing out of every syllable. “I can’t go on like this.”

 

“There’s nothing you can do,” Donghyuck shrugs. “You made the choice to survive and now you live with the consequences.”

 

Mark shakes at that, tears falling harder. He looks up at Renjun with wide eyes and some old, rusted part of Renjun’s heart mourns the loss of the wonder in them. “I can’t.” He says, voice cracking. “This isn’t living.”

 

“No,” Renjun agrees. “It’s survival. The only question you have to ask yourself is if you’re strong enough to keep doing it.”

  
  
  


 

When Donghyuck gets the letter, three months later, Renjun is standing next to him, watching the pot for their food. He sinks his nails into Renjun’s wrist hard and biting and Renjun turns to look at him. Donghyuck is as still as Renjun has ever seen him. He plucks the letter out of Donghyuck’s hand and skims the words before flinging the letter into the flames beneath the pot, watching it go up in flame.

 

“I told you he wouldn’t make it,” is all Renjun says, letting Donghyuck anchor himself on his hand.

 

Donghyuck’s nails tighten. “You were wrong, you know,” he says turning to look at Renjun and for a split second Renjun expects there to be tears in his eyes but that is a silly notion. Donghyuck hasn’t cried in years. “He was strong.”

 

“He killed himself,” Renjun says, harsh and unyielding and Donghyuck nods.

 

“Maybe there’s a certain strength in that,” he says watching the flames flicker, the orange reflected in his cold eyes. “Maybe we’re the cowards for doing what we do.”

 

Renjun grabs Donghyuck’s face in his hands and forces him to look at him. “You told me you’d survive,” he says harshly because Donghyuck is not allowed to do this, isn’t allowed to even consider it. If Donghyuck goes then Renjun goes with him. There was never a place that one of them went that the other didn’t follow.

 

“I will,” Donghyuck says, hands coming up to cover Renjun’s. It’s the most contact they’ve had in years and Renjun’s blood pulses harder. “Don’t worry, darling,” he smirks, broken and beautiful. Renjun desperately wants to kiss him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

-

 

Renjun stares out the window, moodily bringing the cigarette back up to his lips.

 

“Those things will kill you, you know,” Donghyuck says from behind him. Renjun snorts and doesn’t bother turning until he sits down next to him. It’s not a shock anymore to see Donghyuck in crazy hair colors and clothes, always following the trends of Panem as avidly as a middle aged housewife does, but it’s more of a surprise to see him with black hair and jeans, looking the most normal he’s looked in years.

 

“What’s this change?” Renjun asks putting a finger up to his locks with the same hand that’s holding his cigarette, finger barely brushing the strands. Donghyuck doesn’t flinch as the burning embers land on his cheek when Renjun jostles his hand. Renjun stays a little longer, if only to see if Donghyuck will react, and then pulls away.

 

“New year, new games,” Donghyuck says lightly, plucking the cigarette from his hand and taking a long drag. “New me.”

 

Renjun hums, accepting it back from him. “New us,” he agrees drolly, watching lightning flash across the empty sky.

 

 

-

 

 

Jisung Park is the ninth tribute. He is unbelievably trusting, with wide eyes and even bigger hands. Renjun doesn’t look at him for too long, he already knows what will happen and sentiment is not a luxury he can afford.

 

Jisung dies thirty seven seconds into the Games, shot in the back with three arrows and the cannon booms in symphony with others, a last song for their fallen bodies. Renjun sighs and stubs out his cigarette on the tray. Next to him, Donghyuck drains his bottle and turns off the screen.

 

They go on. Surviving.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! let me know what you thought!
> 
>  
> 
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